Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/403

Rh urging him to come. I wrote to Trumbull to the same effect yesterday.

I am much disappointed that you did not receive my letter concerning my interviews with Greeley and Hutchins. I should be still more disappointed if it were lost. The substance of it was that Greeley renewed upon me the impression that he is a sincere man with right instincts upon all moral questions. Indeed I felt some sense of having wronged him in my thoughts—in assuming for instance that John Cochrane would have more influence with him than Trumbull. We talked half an hour about the letter he wrote to you, and he acknowledged finally that he had misconceived your purpose in writing to him as you did, but maintained with some show of reason that you had misconceived his political attitude as regards the Gratz Brown performance. I did not see your letter to him—in fact, I refused to see it, since, for the purpose of my argument, it made no difference what you said. The next morning, after this particular conversation, he said he thought you had more political influence than he (Greeley) had with the Tribune thrown into the bargain. And I am sure he did not say this to be repeated to you, because it was dropped incidentally in some talk about the last State election in Connecticut.

What he said on the subject of civil service reform was satisfactory to me and would be so to you if you had, as I now have, the faculty of believing that he is a sincere man.

But I hope you will receive the other letter in New York.

Godkin, in the Nation of this week, seems to have committed himself to Grant in one of the profoundest non sequiturs I have ever seen. I am sorry for this, but I fear that it cannot be helped. It will be a strange sight to see the Nation giving up the cause of reform in totidem verbis, while Schurz and Trumbull and Sumner do not despair of the Republic.